UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

Hi,
Can I know how to grep for lines with non-ascii characters in a file?

If not grep, at least can we do it with command-line perl or awk? I tried the [:ascii] functionality of perl, but still could not get the result. Any help??

PS: I was sure that someone should have asked this question already. So i searched thro the forums, but could not find one relating to what i am asking..

Thanks
Srini

Not tested though !

Try and let us know for any problems!

Code:

#! /opt/third-party/bin/perl

my($content, $length);

open(FILE, "< sample") || die "Unable to open file small. <$!>\n";

while( chomp($content = <FILE>) ) {
    length = length($content);
    
    for( $i = 0; $i < $length; $i++ ) {
     
        if( ord(substr($content, $i, 1)) > 127 )
        {
            print "$content\n";
            last;
        }        
    }
}
close(FILE);

exit 0

Thanks Madhan!! That works fine.. (except for the "$length" instead of length)..
Can i know whether there is a command (instead of a script) to do this job?? an awk or perl or grep command??

Thanks
Srini

Right! That was a catch..

Am not aware of any command to suit your requirement directly!

tr -d "\000-\011\013-\177" < txtfile

...where txtfile is the file you want to scan for non-ascii chars.

This will send txtfile to stdout, but along the way delete every ascii char except newline.

Thanks mschwage. But the command doesnt work out for me. Can you please let me know whether it worked out for u?

Thanks
Srini

[QUOTE=srinivasan_85]Hi,
Can I know how to grep for lines with non-ascii characters in a file?

If not grep, at least can we do it with command-line perl or awk? I tried the [:ascii] functionality of perl, but still could not get the result. Any help??

Have you tried this -
grep -v [:alnum:] test